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In July, I hosted our Supper Club Dinner. We were experiencing temperatures in the 100's at the time, so I decided to have a casual grilled pizza/pool party. Here is our menu and a review of each recipe.

Easy Sangria (CL - 5/03) - We started off the evening sipping this sangria by the pool while we enjoyed the appetizers (actually, several of us were in the pool!!). We especially liked the distinct flavors of cloves, allspice and cinnamon in the recipe. Very refreshing!!

Spicy Red Lentil Dal with Pita Wedges (CL - 7/03) - This appetizer was well liked. A nice blend of Indian seasonings. Even our members that have had very little experience cooking with lentils, had favorable things to say about it.

Guacamole with Chipolte Tortilla Chips (CL - 5/03) - Great guac recipe! We felt kind of funny about chunks of tomatillos in the finished product so we opted to process it in the food processor. This improved the texture, but also made the guacamole thinner. We added an extra avocado or two to thicken it up. The chipolte tortilla chips were tasty, but every once in awhile you'd run into one that set your mouth on fire!! It was very difficult to sprinkle the chipolte chili powder evenly over the torilla wedges so some got more than their share of seasonings.

Fresh Peach Soup (CL - 6/95) - This recipe is a CL oldie. The soup base is made up of blenderized honeydew melon, orange juice, vanilla yogurt, honey, ginger root and lime juice. Diced fresh peaches are then added as well as fresh blueberries. Overall, everyone liked the soup. One person commented that it tasted like fruit cocktail. It was a refreshing first course for a hot summer evening. The one change we agreed we would make in the future would be to puree some of the peaches so it had more of a strong peachy flavor in the soup base.

Wheat Berry Salad with Dried Fruit (CL - 7/03) - This salad was the hit of the evening! It has been reviewed extensively elsewhere on the BB so I'll just add the everyone thought it was awesome!

Zesty Black Bean and Corn Salad (CL - 7/03) - This salad was also well liked. No other special or significant comments or observations were made.

Grilled Mediterranean Chicken Pizza (CL - 6/97) - I found this pizza recipe to be very disappointing. Looking at the recipe again after the fact, I probably should have been able to see it would be a bust. The topping is a mixture of sun-dried tomatoes, kalamata olives, tarragon, capers and roasted chicken breasts. I like all of these ingredients, so I assumed it would be a terrific pizza. The problem was that there was no sauce and no cheese in the recipe. This made the finished pizza very structurally unsound. There was absolutely nothing to hold the toppings on and it was extremely dry. I grabbed some shredded mozzarella that I happened to have in the refrigerator and tossed some on the top as the pizza grilled in an attempt to keep the toppings on. Everyone complained about the lack of sauce. Great ingredients but a crummy finished product.

Grilled Pizza with Smoked Tofu and Roasted Red Peppers (CL - 6/03) Several of my fellow chefs rolled their eyes when I announced we were making a pizza with smoked tofu!! We decided it would have to be a kitchen secret or the DHs might revolt. As it turned out, everyone, including the tofu haters, thought it was very good. We didn't tell about the tofu until they had all given favorable reviews. However, the group concluded that they are traditionalists and like their pizzas with sauce and cheese.

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough (CL - 4/03) & Quick and Easy Pizza Crust (CL - 6/97) - I decided to experiment with two different pizza dough recipes. The whole wheat recipe rose more and was more like a pan crust. Some thought it had more flavor; others thought it was too doughy and soft. The quick and easy pizza crust was more like a thin crust. I made a few mistakes while making the quick and easy crust which might account for some of it's problems, but I'm too lazy to type out the blow by blow....

Almond Angel Food Cake with Creme Anglaise and Macerated Strawberries (CL - 8/00) - This was our groups second angel food cake. Unfortunately, this one didn't come out as well as the first. The cake just didn't seem to rise. It remained almost as flat as when we put it in the oven. We couldn't figure out what went wrong... the eggs were fresh, we didn't open the oven or make loud noises. It is a mystery!!

Well, that concludes my report. Just in time, because our August dinner in only a week and a half away!! Good thing it was "Procrastination Week" on my FlyLady website or this may never have gotten done!!

Oops Peggy, I have to tell my secret! I did open the oven door for a peek at the cake. I guess this is a big no-no.

If Peggy could have seen my face when she told me she was making the Tofu smoked pizza, I really dont like smoked flavor things, and all I can think is my last experience with tofu (previous CL dinner) is slimy and then add smoke flavoring to that. Well I really liked the pizza, the smoke flavor wasnt overpowering and it did melt like cheese. I even took some home and ate it for leftovers.